This is while my system is taking three hours to transcode about 50 mins of some ProRes HD footage to SD-DVD. I mainly do photography and am dealing with Nikon D800 raw files, but I do several dance recitals per year and offer SD and Blu-Ray to parents. My current system is about three years old and I've been pretty happy with it, but editing D800 files in Lightroom (DNG conversion and adjustments) and render times are starting to make the machine feel dated.

My current system:

Hardware

Thoughts

CPU: Intel i7 950 @3.07GHz

Seemed like the best bang for the $$ at the time

GPU: GeForce GTX 670

Installed last year and made it so editing HD was not as painful. Dual monitors for editing and HDTV for a preview monitor

I guess it realy comes down to I don't really know what I have. I was thinking a 6 core CPU might be a good upgrade rather than scrap everyhting but the video card and drives, but it looks like 1366 is not anything current and getting a CPU might be harder than I thought. I just am not sure what 2011 MB and CPU to look at that will give the boost in render and make it so I feel like I over spent and am underwhelmed.

You are approaching the end of the road with the X59 platform. It still is a very capable platform, but the X79 platform is much better, but also more costly than your budget allows. The 1155 platform would have too many limitations to be a feasible alternative. So what can you do?

You can overclock the 930 to around 3.6 - 4.0 GHz (free, even though the Intel mobo is not very easy to overclock)

The video card and memory are great, nothing to change in that area.

You could add some more disks (can be ported to a new system in the future) to distribute the load better.

Use the slow Drobo for backups only.

This keeps the cost down and prolongs the longevity of your system. This also gives you some time to save for a new system in the future. A properly tuned and overclocked i7-920 can still hold up reasonably well with current day systems, as my old system demonstrates at rank # 49 in the PPBM5 Benchmark based on total time, and even rank #7 based on RPI (relative performance index).

Upgrading to a new 2011 platform requires a new motherboard, new CPU, new CPU cooler, new memory and possibly a new case, new PSU, new BD or DVD burner, etc, depending on whether you want to dismantle the current system or just add the new system, as I did. You can read about my new system, including all the following pages here: Intro Part 1

Thanks John, sorry for the late reply. I had back after back gigs this weekend I got to shoot with my new XF100!

It looks like upgrading from my 960 to 3930k is right around $1000 with the information you gave. I would hope the rendering performance gains are noticeable, the other benefit would be new hardware on a aging system with hopefully another few years with little to no trouble.

I don't know why I can't seem to wrap my head around the different processors and sockets. I used to be such a PC geek. But the 3930k seems to be the logical upgrade and better bang for the dollar than the Extreme editions.

The current power supply is a Corsair GS600.

I am also thinking about the Fractal Designs case. I am currently out of space for hard drives with my current one.

Thanks for your reply Harm, I believe John's list for the basic parts above are right around $1000. Before I bite the bullet, I'll get a new cooler and powers supply and play with over clocking. I have the Intel Extreme board that should allow overclocking that's not too difficult. Let me know if I am missing anything about the upgrade costs.

I'll also follow up with your hard drive remomendations. I currently with my project files and my raw video on my D: drive and write all renders to the E. My cache files are currently setup with the Premiere defaults to my SSD Raid-0 C drive. I am thinking about adding another SSD to write those to, but I currently seem to be doing well space-wise with all that on C. My Drobo is just used for my photography business and no video is written to or read from it. I move finished project files to other external drives when finished.

I'll do some reading up on OC, but I think I'll eventually start upgrading.